Audio

Monday, July 2, the audio department went on a field trip to hear the launch of the new Dolby ATMOS theatre in Chicago. Here is how this sound compares to other surround sound options (click image to learn more):

Movies which take advantage of the ATMOS system are developed with some similarities to games in that:

Individual sounds — like the debris hurling out of an explosion, or a voice booming ominously from the sky — are mapped to “objects,” which can be controlled dynamically and manipulated around the theater. There are two sides to the system — the rendering tool in the theater, and the tool that’s provided to the sound mixer, to create the objects and tag them with metadata.

This is the first time this kind of technology has been used in movies, and you can read lots more about it here: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/06/dolby-atmos-brave/all/

Lecture by Ariel Gross at GDC 2012. There were over 80,000 lines of dialogue in Saints Row: The Third. Managing that many lines can be a daunting task for any audio team. Ariel Gross, senior audio designer at Volition, imparts three valuable lessons learned throughout his adventures with voice…